September 11, 2026
Cali is the city Colombians go to dance and the city foreign travelers most often skip, and until this August both of those things were easy to explain. It is the third city of the country, 2.2 million people on the flat floor of the Cauca valley at about 1,000 meters, warm all year, the capital of salsa and of the Pacific’s Black culture, with a city center that is not colonial and a reputation for violence that the numbers, which we give you below, do not entirely contradict. On August 10, 2026 a magnitude 7.4 earthquake killed 154 people here and changed the questions. We run six tours in Cali, from a salsa lesson to whale watching on the Pacific, so this is the guide we give our own guests, written a month after the quake: what the city is, what is open and what is not, what is worth your time, the salsa as it actually works, the day trips, the airport, the weather, safety with the police’s own figures, where to sleep and a plan for two or three days.
The short version
Cali is open, working and rebuilding at the same time. The mayor’s office’s official count on September 8, 2026 was 154 dead, 1,657 injured and 24 buildings in total collapse; 765 buildings had been declared uninhabitable by September 5 and demolitions began in the first week of September. The airport never stopped, the zoo and the botanical garden stayed open, Cristo Rey reopened in part on August 22 with reservations, La Tertulia is hosting the film festival in October, the hotel association counts about 3 percent of the department’s lodging as damaged, and the mayor has confirmed the Feria de Cali for December 25 to 30. Fly into Alfonso Bonilla Aragón, in Palmira, 30 to 45 minutes from the city; sleep in San Antonio, Granada or the south after asking the hotel one question, whether it is open; give the city two nights for the viewpoints, the river, the food and a salsa lesson; and use a third day for the sugar haciendas, the San Cipriano river or, from July to October, the whales. The homicide figures are the highest of any big city in Colombia and they are concentrated in comunas you will never enter; the rules that keep visitors out of trouble are the ordinary ones, and they are below.
Cali after August 10, 2026: what is open, honestly
At 7:34 in the morning on Monday, August 10, 2026, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake about 100 kilometers deep under San José del Palmar, in Chocó, by the Colombian Geological Survey’s readings, reached Cali about 170 kilometers to the south and did more damage here than in any other big city. The Alcaldía’s official repository, which is the source we trust for the numbers, gave this balance at 6:00 p.m. on September 8: 154 people dead, 88 rescued alive, 1,657 injured, 14 reports of missing people still open and 24 buildings in total collapse; its report of September 5 added 503 partial collapses, 765 buildings declared uninhabitable, 45,139 families registered as affected, 492 people in the city’s shelters and 88,873 tons of rubble collected. The governor’s office of the Valle del Cauca had counted 189 dead in the whole department by August 17. Demolition of the worst buildings began in the first week of September. The damage was heaviest, by the mayor’s office’s own account at the three-week mark, in comunas 18, 17, 19, 2 and 3, which is to say the hills of the southwest, the affluent south, the west around El Refugio, and the north and center where most visitors sleep: Granada, El Peñón and San Antonio are in comunas 2 and 3. We say that plainly because it is the opposite of the usual Cali story, in which the hard neighborhoods are the eastern ones; this time the earthquake took its toll on the hillsides and the towers.
What matters to a visitor, as of the day this page was written, September 11, 2026. The airport in Palmira reopened within a day, is administered by the national aviation authority and was running its schedule when we checked. The Zoológico de Cali and the city’s botanical garden inspected their grounds and stayed open. Cristo Rey, the ecopark on the Cerro de los Cristales, reopened two of its trails on Saturday, August 22 with the mandatory online reservation; the environment department found small cracks in the monument that it says do not put visitors at risk, and the trail from the Cristales neighborhood is due to reopen in October. The Museo La Tertulia is open and hosts the international film festival from October 20 to 25; the Teatro Municipal cancelled its whole September program after its inspection found localized damage. The hotel association’s census on August 22 found 33 lodging establishments with some level of damage, 3 percent of the department’s stock, and 2 percent of rooms out of service, with occupancy that had collapsed from a projected 70 percent to about 15 percent; its message was that the city is standing and ready, and ours is that the single most useful thing a traveler can do for Cali this year is to come and spend money in it. Pico y placa, the license-plate restriction, is in force on weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., which affects private cars, not our vehicles. The question to ask any hotel this year is the one we ask: are you open, and has the building been inspected.
The cultural calendar tells you the mood. The Ajazzgo jazz festival was the first event back, on September 9. The Festival Mundial de Salsa, which had been set for September 24 to 27, was cancelled and is to be rescheduled; the Petronio Álvarez festival of Pacific music, the biggest party of the Cali year after the Feria, was moved from August to November with dates still to be confirmed; the Ensálsate salsa company cancelled its Cali shows after the quake, by the press reports we read, while the Delirio show kept its dates. The Feria de Cali, December 25 to 30, is confirmed by the mayor, who has promised an edition without precedent to restart the economy. If you were coming for salsa, the lesson, the salsotecas and Delirio are all there; the big open-air festivals are the thing to check the week before you fly.
What Cali is
Santiago de Cali was founded on July 25, 1536 by Sebastián de Belalcázar, by the mayor’s office’s own history, which makes it two years older than Bogotá, and it grew for four centuries as a town of sugar haciendas and the trade road to the Pacific port of Buenaventura before the twentieth century made it the industrial capital of the southwest. The 2018 census counted 2,227,642 people, the third city of the country; it sits at about 1,000 meters, the department gives its average temperature as 23 to 24 degrees, and in 2018 Congress made it a Distrito Especial with the official adjectives deportivo, cultural, turístico, empresarial y de servicios. The nickname the city uses for itself, La Sucursal del Cielo, the branch office of heaven, is one the mayor’s office prints on its own bulletins. What Cali is for a traveler is three things at once: the salsa capital of the world by its own count and by any reasonable one; the door to Colombia’s Pacific, the country’s Black heartland, whose music, food and people fill the city; and a big, hot, working city with a small colonial hill, a river with a boulevard, a Christ on a mountain and the best-tasting fruit in the country. It is not pretty in the way Cartagena is pretty. It is alive in a way few cities are.
Things to do in Cali
Start with the two hills. Cristo Rey is a 26-meter, 464-ton statue by the Italian brothers Alideo and Adelino Tazzioli, inaugurated on October 25, 1953 on the Cerro de los Cristales and now the center of an ecopark run by the city’s environment department, which had counted more than 260,000 visitors in 2025 by late October; entry is free, visits are booked on the city’s app, the guided walks leave at 9:00 a.m., noon and 3:00 p.m., and since the earthquake only two of the trails are open, so book before you drive up. The view is the whole valley to the central range on a clear morning, which is most mornings. The other hill is San Antonio, the colonial quarter that survived the twentieth century: the little church on top, the park where storytellers and street musicians work the weekend evenings, and the streets of low houses below it that have become the city’s restaurants, cafés and small hotels. Between the two, on the river, the Bulevar del Río is the center’s front porch, with the bronze Gato de Tejada and the painted cats along the bank, and the statue of Belalcázar on his hill above it. Our private city tour does the Christ, the founder’s hill, the river and a walk through San Antonio in four to five hours from 128 US dollars per person, and ends in San Antonio on purpose, so that you stay for dinner.
The museum is La Tertulia, the modern and contemporary art museum on the river, with a cinemateca that hosts the international film festival every October; it is open and its hours change with the exhibitions, so check its social channels the day before. The Zoológico de Cali, on the Cali river at Carrera 2 Oeste with Calle 14, is, in our opinion, the best zoo in Colombia and a real morning: 2.4 kilometers of route through more than 2,500 animals in eight habitats, open every day from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., 40,000 pesos for adults, 27,500 for children of two to twelve and 30,500 for over-65s, with limited paid parking. The Cerro de las Tres Cruces above the west of the city is the locals’ dawn hike; ask us about its state before you go, because the hills took the earthquake hardest. And the food is a reason in itself: the Alameda market, where our three-hour food walk does five tastings from 71 US dollars, is the place to meet chontaduro with salt and honey, lulada, champús, cholado, pandebono and the sancocho de gallina that the valley claims as its own. The full list, thirteen places in the order we would do them with what is open at each, is in our guide to things to do in Cali.
Salsa, honestly
Cali’s salsa is danced on the heels, faster than anywhere else, and it is learned, not watched. The first night we send everyone to a lesson: our private lesson with a local professional dancer is two hours on the floor inside a four-hour outing with pickup, from 77 US dollars per person, and it is the difference between standing at the edge of a salsoteca and being pulled into it. The second night is the salsoteca. La Topa Tolondra, the bar with the Last Supper mural you will recognize from our salsa page, is the one visitors and Caleños share; the older salsotecas of the barrios are where our guides take people who want the real thing, and they choose by the night. The show is Delirio, a circus-and-orchestra spectacle under its own big top that plays roughly once a month: the ticket sellers listed September 25 and October 23, 2026 at 9:30 p.m., with tables from about 218,000 pesos per person. The Festival Mundial de Salsa, the September showcase of the city’s dance schools, was cancelled this year by the earthquake and will be rescheduled; the Feria de Cali at the end of December, with its salsódromo parade, is confirmed. Two practical rules: Juanchito, the salsa town across the river that the songs made famous, is a taxi both ways and a local guide, never a walk; and the best nights are Thursday to Saturday, late.
The day trips
The valley around Cali is sugar cane to the horizon, and the haciendas that grew it are the literary landscape of Colombia. The Hacienda El Paraíso, in El Cerrito, is the house where Jorge Isaacs set María, the country’s nineteenth-century novel; the department’s heritage institute, Inciva, runs it as a museum, in normal times open every day including holidays from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., 18,000 pesos for Colombian adults and 10 US dollars for foreigners at the ticket window. Read this before you plan the day, though: Inciva closed all five of its heritage sites on August 10 for structural inspection, reopened three of them on September 10, and on September 11 El Paraíso and its natural sciences museum in Cali were still closed, with the reopening to be announced on its social media. Our sugar cane day, seven hours from 149 US dollars per person, includes the hacienda, the cane fields and a traditional lunch, and until the house reopens we will tell you so before you book rather than sell you a closed door. In the other direction, toward the Pacific, the San Cipriano reserve is a river of clear water in the rainforest of the Buenaventura road, reached on the brujitas, the motorcycle-driven rail carts that run along an old railway line; our full day there is eight to ten hours from 170 US dollars with the entrance and the brujita included, and the river is the swim of your trip. And from July to October the humpback whales calve in the Uramba Bahía Málaga national park off Buenaventura; our shared whale-watching day is twelve to fourteen hours from 315 US dollars with the park entry, the boat and lunch, and August and September are the peak months, so this year’s season is nearly over and next year’s needs a July to October date. One thing to know before you book either Pacific day: Buenaventura is inside the area the British Foreign Office advises against all but essential travel to, which can matter for a British insurance policy; the detail is in our guide to whether Cali is safe.
Getting to Cali
Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport, CLO, is not in Cali but in Palmira, on the other side of the Cauca river, 30 to 45 minutes from the city by our transfer company’s figure. It has been administered directly by the Aerocivil, the national aviation authority, since September 1, 2025, when the private concession ended, and it is the airport of the whole southwest: on the schedule we checked in early September 2026 it had direct flights from 29 airports in seven countries, Bogotá more than a thousand times a month, Medellín, Cartagena, San Andrés and the Pacific towns inside Colombia, and Madrid, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Panama City, Mexico City, Santiago de Chile, Punta Cana and Aruba abroad, with Avianca, LATAM, JetSMART, Wingo, Copa, American, JetBlue and Aeroméxico among the carriers. It reopened within a day of the earthquake and was running its schedule when we checked. From the terminal, a taxi runs on Cali’s 2026 tariff, which sets the minimum fare at 7,100 pesos, the flag fall at 3,700 and a surcharge of 1,800 from 7:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. and on Sundays and holidays, but the airport run is a special case: the meter counts to the Paso del Comercio bridge over the Cauca and a fixed rate set by Palmira’s transit authority covers the rest, so ask the driver for the total before you get in. Uber operates in Cali around the clock and lists airport pickups. Or book a private transfer with Safe Transfers, our transfer company: a driver inside the terminal with your name, your flight tracked and the price fixed, from 49 US dollars.
By road, Cali is the hub of the southwest. Armenia and the coffee region are about 187 kilometers and four hours up the valley by the route calculators, through Buga and Tuluá, and Bogotá is a long day through the central range on a road that, since a landslide in late July 2026, has been down to one lane on the Cajamarca side with jams of eight to ten hours, so fly; both lanes were expected back at the end of September. Medellín is most of a day on the Panamericana. Popayán, the white city, is south on the same highway, a long day trip by private car; ask us. What is open in the coffee region after the earthquake, and why we now route that leg through Armenia, is in our Armenia guide; the immigration formalities for an international arrival are the same as at Bogotá and are in our Bogotá airport guide.
The weather at 1,000 meters
Cali is hot and it is not humid in the way the coast is. IDEAM’s 1991 to 2020 averages for the airport station give a mean of 24 degrees, afternoons of 29 to 31 all year with August the hottest month, and nights of 18 to 19; the station in the city itself records 1,173 millimeters of rain a year against the airport’s 876, because the city sits against the western range and the mountains make the weather. April is the wettest month, at 179 millimeters in the city, and May, October and November follow; July and August are the driest at 50 and 39, and the whole of the year from June to September is the good season for the viewpoints and the Pacific, which is also the whale season. The rule is the Andean one: viewpoints and hikes in the morning, museums and the pool in the afternoon, and a cheap umbrella in the bag from March to May and in October and November. The country-wide picture, with the 2026 El Niño outlook, is in our guide to the best time to visit Colombia. The month-by-month table, the four IDEAM stations and the 2026 El Niño outlook are in our Cali weather guide.
Is Cali safe?
Here are the numbers as the authorities publish them, because a guide that hides them is not worth reading. The national police’s homicide dataset records 1,068 homicides in Cali in 2025, up from 950 in 2024, and 663 in the first seven months of 2026, which is more than the same months of 2025; on the 2018 census population that is a rate of about 48 per 100,000, the highest of any large Colombian city and among the highest in the Americas. The city’s Personería, the public ombudsman, published the anatomy of the 2025 figure in March: 82.5 percent by firearm, 93.5 percent of the victims men, 61 percent of them between 18 and 34, Sundays the deadliest day, and five comunas, 15, 14, 18, 13 and 21, accounting for 43 percent of the deaths. Four of those five are the eastern district of Aguablanca and the fifth is the hillside of the southwest; none of them is a place a visitor goes, and nothing about Cali’s violence is aimed at tourists. What is aimed at tourists is the ordinary Colombian menu, and Cali serves it generously: the phone snatched from a hand on a downtown street, the drink accepted from a stranger in a salsoteca, the taxi hailed at three in the morning, the walk from a bar to a hotel that should have been a car. The habits that work are in our CEO’s honest take on whether Colombia is safe, and in Cali we add three: the center is for daylight, the east is not on your map, and every night out ends in a car you called. After the earthquake, one practical note: the Hospital Universitario del Valle, the region’s main public hospital, lost part of a tower on August 10 by the health organization’s first report, so carry insurance that covers a private clinic, as you should everywhere in the country. The full answer, with the police’s figures by year, the comunas, the earthquake and the two advisories, is in our guide to whether Cali is safe.
Where to stay
Four answers. San Antonio, the colonial hill above the center, is the neighborhood we put most guests in: small hotels in old houses, the restaurants and cafés at your door, the river ten minutes down, and a walk home from dinner that is fine until about ten. Granada, north of the river, is the city’s restaurant and boutique-hotel district and the practical base for a couple of nights, with El Peñón, the quiet streets around La Tertulia, next to it. The south, Ciudad Jardín and the road to Pance, is where the big houses and the country-club hotels are, green and cool and a car ride from everything. And the north around the Chipichape and Menga malls is where the chain hotels and the nightlife strip are, for people who want a known brand and a pool. All four are in the comunas the earthquake hit hardest, so this year the first message to any hotel is the same: are you open, and has the building been inspected. Check the property’s Registro Nacional de Turismo on the government’s public lookup, and prefer a place that answers the question without being offended by it.
A plan for two days, and for three
Day one: land, check in, and take the late afternoon on the two hills with our city tour, Cristo Rey while the light is long, the river at dusk and dinner in San Antonio; then the salsa lesson the same evening if you have the legs, or the next. Day two: the zoo in the morning while it is cool, the Alameda market for lunch, La Tertulia in the heat of the afternoon, and the salsoteca at night with a car both ways. If you have a third day, choose by the calendar: the whales if it is July to October, the San Cipriano river if you want to swim, the Hacienda El Paraíso, once Inciva reopens it, if you read María at school or want to understand the valley. With four, Popayán by private car. With a night to spare in December, the Feria, and with the Petronio in November, the Pacific comes to town.
What we do differently
Every tour we run in Cali is guided by someone who lives here and dances here, with hotel pickup, the entrances included and all-risk insurance, and the itineraries are built around the city’s two clocks: the viewpoints and the zoo before the heat, the salsa after dark, with a vehicle that waits. This year we add the thing nobody else on the internet is telling you: what is open, what is damaged and the question to ask your hotel. Our transfers from the airport in Palmira are run by Safe Transfers, our own transfer company, so the driver who meets you at arrivals is the same kind of driver who takes you home from the salsoteca at two in the morning.
Questions travelers ask
Is Cali, Colombia worth visiting?
If salsa, the Pacific and a big Colombian city that tourism has not polished are what you want, yes, for two or three nights. If you want colonial streets and beaches, Cartagena is the answer and Cali is the detour.
Is Cali safe to visit after the August 2026 earthquake?
The city is open: the airport, the zoo, Cristo Rey in part, La Tertulia and the hotels that passed inspection are all working, and the mayor has confirmed the Feria for December. The damage was heavy in the hillside and central comunas, 765 buildings were declared uninhabitable and demolitions are under way, so confirm your hotel is open and inspected before you book.
Is Cali safe for tourists?
Cali has the highest homicide rate of any big city in Colombia, about 48 per 100,000 in 2025, and it is concentrated in eastern and hillside comunas that visitors never enter: five of them account for 43 percent of the deaths. Tourists are exposed to theft, not to that violence: keep the phone in the pocket downtown, take cars at night and never walk to Juanchito.
What is Cali known for?
Salsa, above everything: the schools, the salsotecas, the Delirio show and the Feria de Cali at the end of December. Then the Pacific’s music and food, the Petronio Álvarez festival, Cristo Rey, the zoo and the sugar haciendas of the valley. The full list is in our guide to things to do in Cali.
How many days do you need in Cali?
Two nights for the city and the salsa; three to add the whales, the San Cipriano river or, once it reopens, the Hacienda El Paraíso; four if you want Popayán.
Which airport serves Cali?
Alfonso Bonilla Aragón, CLO, in Palmira, 30 to 45 minutes from the city, with direct flights from Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Madrid, Panama City and Mexico City among others on the schedule we checked in September 2026.
When is the best time to visit Cali?
June to September for the driest weather and the whales, and the last week of December for the Feria; avoid nothing, because it rains in every month and the city works in all of them.
Plan it with us
Every tour we run in Cali picks up at your hotel, and our transfers from Alfonso Bonilla Aragón are operated by Safe Transfers by Cielo.Travel. Write to us on WhatsApp with your dates, or start with our Cali tours page.
Sources
The facts on this page were checked on September 11, 2026 against the following sources: the Alcaldía de Cali’s official earthquake repository; the Alcaldía’s history of the city; the Alcaldía’s Cristo Rey bulletin; the Personería de Cali’s 2025 homicide report; the national police homicide dataset on datos.gov.co; IDEAM’s climate normals on datos.gov.co; the DANE’s 2018 census profile of Cali; Ley 1933 de 2018; the Aerocivil’s airport site; the Zoológico de Cali’s visitor page; Inciva’s Hacienda El Paraíso page; Uber’s Cali page; the Delirio listing on Tuboleta; and the Gobernación del Valle, Cotelco Valle, PAHO, Inciva and festival reports as published in the Colombian press between August 10 and September 11, 2026. Where a figure comes from a route calculator or a ticket seller rather than an authority, the text says so.
